SEO Consultant
It has been obvious for quite some time now, WordPress is the king of kings among all content management systems (CMS). Today we come to tell you what we think are the best plugins for WordPress.
These software add-ons to add functionality to a WordPress website are the basis of everything. It is where you start to incorporate all the extra possibilities for the page. I don’t think I need to explain what a plugin is.
In fact we go one step further and we have come to tell you what we think are the best plugins for WordPress. Special recommendations with some of the plugins that get the best ratings.
Plugins that allow you to add adapt your website to your needs and that focus on specific aspects to bring direct benefits to your online strategy.
Let’s talk about:
- A WordPress plugin to improve Core Web Vitals.
- A plugin to optimise images and serve them in improved formats through WordPress
- An SEO auditing plugin by Ahrefs
WordPress is still king
índice
Of course, WordPress is still king. From the initial vocation it assumed as a blogging platform there is hardly anything left. It is now the most important CMS in the world.
According to data updated in 2022 on WordPress, our beloved CMS is present in 35% of all websites that exist on the Internet. Now that’s eating the market, dessert and dinner. When compared to other content management systems, WordPress has 61.8% of the market share.
The most recent update, 5.9, has been downloaded more than 7,000,000 million times. Within the WordPress download repository there are more than 54,000 freely available plugins. Everything is free, yes, but you might want to pay for some extra plugins.
Before we get to the topic of the article, let’s not forget to mention the essential WordPress plugins. Akismet to monitor spam, Yoast SEO to write any content following your SEO content strategy and WooCommerce to sell, of course.
Improve Core Web Vitals with Autopmize
During the second half of 2021 we already started to warn you that Core Web Vitals were coming, one of the last relevant Google updates that can drastically affect the search engine ranking results of any website.
If you’re on WordPress, you probably already know that you can breathe easy. It’s true that working with this type of CMS can be much more than just a cost-effective way to solve technical problems. With a WordPress plugin for Core Web Vitals things are a bit easier. With Autoptimize even more so.
Working with this plugin for Core Web Vitals is very easy. Add, minify and cache style codes and scripts directly. No more touching CSS and JavaScript code. This plugin moves and defers scripts to the final part, the footer, and also compresses the HTML. You will solve code problems.
Of course it allows you to configure the image lazy-load optimization, optimize the loading of Google Fonts, cache the site… If you have not had time to optimize these factors Core Web Vitals and you use WordPress, you are in front of a great opportunity to improve.
Optimise images in WordPress with Short Pixel
Optimising images in WordPress is a basic. And of course, there is no catch, we already said that there is a plugin. Well, there is a bit of a catch, ok. WordPress plugins are free, all of them, but the best plugins usually incorporate premium features, for which it can sometimes be profitable to pay.
Short Pixel is perfect for all the image enhancement needs of a website. It is capable of resizing and compressing everything you need in one go. In its free plan, it has the capacity to optimise 100 images per month.
One of the most interesting functions of this outstanding WordPress plugin is the conversion of images to WebP format. This is Google’s preferred format, so to speak. It’s theirs and that’s why they like it best.
It is recommended for serving load-optimised images and using it can positively affect organic ranking results, of course. It also, of course, has a direct influence on the slowdown when serving images and offers results with excellent resolutions.
And compressions for all formats. It includes the option to automatically convert PNG to JPG, compresses JPG images, and its variations JPEG, JPEG 2000, JPEG XR, also GIFs, even PDF documents.
WordPress content audit with Ahrefs
Finally, a WordPress content audit. Or an SEO auditor in the form of an Ahrefs plugin. There, whenever you want, tucked away in your plugins folder, at the click of a button. It’s a bit like that, really.
This WordPress SEO plugin automates content audits and can help improve organic ranking results, in a sustained way. It displays performance indicators for every single page and post on a website.
It is able to set target keywords, based on position data obtained from Google Search Console. It can also be synchronised with the main plugins for writing SEO content, where these target keywords should have been set beforehand.
One of the most interesting things it offers are suggestions for improvement, based on the organic results of each of the contents.
The Ahrefs plugin for SEO audits of content establishes different tips for content that ranks between organic results 3 and 20. Update with new content for the best positions, consolidate and unify several pages that may be bidding for the same keyword or guidelines for rewriting and rethinking what is left out of the top 20.
It is also very interesting the nuance of exclusion that he makes for the contents outside the top 20 but which, nevertheless, are among those that attract the most traffic on the entire web. He rightly recommends leaving them out of the analysis as they can contaminate the overall data for the SEO audit statistics.
And how many plugins can be used in WordPress?
Surely you may have thought or it has come to your mind, where have I heard that it is not advisable to start putting plugins and plugins inside WordPress? Well, it’s not a bad idea. Plugins can directly affect the loading speed of a website and other core technical factors.
How many plugins can WordPress support and how many can you max out? It depends, always answer “it depends”. If someone in marketing doesn’t answer “it depends”, doubt. There are websites that can perform optimally even with 50 plugins installed. However, a single misconfigured or poorly executed plugin can bring down a whole website.
It’s all about choosing what you need and what you know you can use.
One of the important factors to keep in mind when choosing WordPress plugins is to avoid duplication. If you have to choose well, you should not have 2 plugins that serve the same purpose. It is true that sometimes they can complement each other, even serve to save paid functions that one or the other does not include.
It is usually best to opt for the plugin with less weight.
Again, if you’re on WordPress, you’re probably already aware of the immense possibilities it offers for implementing improvements.
With these simple SEO tools we’ve shown you, or plugins, it’s much easier to start solving pending tasks. Everything you’ve seen here is useful.
It’s just a matter of installing plugins and getting to work.
